Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill [Lords]

What I am saying is that the new structures are well bedded in. We generally legislate in ways that accord with existing structures, and if we start to unwind that arrangement, complications will ensue. New clause 17 proposes abolition of the Standards Board for England and the Adjudication Panel for England, which are two important and effective bodies. If that were to happen, councillors and members of local authority standards committees who look to the Standards Board for advice, guidance, training and direction about the conduct regime for local authority members would be cut adrift. In 2008 we devolved the conduct regime for local authority members to local authorities, and in doing so we created a new role for the Standards Board for England. The board is still there to investigate the most serious allegations of misconduct by local authority members, but since 2008, when we devolved the conduct regime for local authority members to local authorities, it has also functioned in its new role as strategic regulator for local authority standards committees. The regime that we have introduced accords with the recommendations of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, including its recommendation for the establishment of a more locally based decision-making regime for the investigation and determination of all but the most serious misconduct allegations, but with the Standards Board at the centre of the revised regime with its new strategic, regulatory role to ensure the consistency of standards. If Conservative Members are challenging that, they are obviously challenging the recommendations of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, which recently approached the Standards Board for England for advice on how a successful, robust and transparent conduct regime should operate. The Standards Board for England is now fully equipped to perform its new role. Legislation came into force this summer that allows the board to become directly involved with local authority standards committees if its scrutiny of the way in which the conduct regime is operating in an authority causes them concern, or if they are invited to do so by the authority itself. The board has restructured, and has shed staff. Its budget has fallen from just over £8 million in 2008-2009 to £7.4 million in 2009-2010, and it is planned for it to fall further in future years as ongoing efficiency savings are made. Today is the second day of the Standards Board for England's eighth annual assembly of standards committees—[Interruption.] I think that I have sent them a video recording of my speeches, so that should cheer them up. More than 800 delegates, councillors, local authority monitoring officers and standards committee members are meeting in Birmingham to discuss all aspects of the conduct regime, to share best practice and to attend training and question and answer sessions. They will be discussing, among other things, the role of standards in parish councils— I am sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) will be pleased to know that—how to engage council leaders, embedding standards and how to communicate the standards regime to the public. They will also be discussing how standards regime practitioners can support councillors who serve on licensing and planning committees. The Adjudication Panel for England performs vital functions. It considers appeals made by councillors against the decisions of local authority standards committees and makes decisions about the most serious breaches of the code of conduct, deciding what sanctions are appropriate in cases where a breach is found to have taken place. That is a serious obligation. Where a serious breach of the code of conduct is found to have occurred, the consequences are, rightly, serious, too. The Adjudication Panel for England has the power to ban a person from being a councillor for up to five years. It is right that it should have that power. Actions that result in a breach of the code such as bullying can have a profound effect on the victim of the actions that led to the breach. We consider it appropriate for a national body to have such powers, but we question the alternative, which is the abolition of the Adjudication Panel, giving a local authority standards committee the power to stop a person being a councillor in any other authority for up to five years. The vast majority of local authority members observe the high standards of behaviour that the electorate rightly expect of them, but we have seen that a robust conduct regime is essential to provide redress when the code of conduct is not observed. The Standards Board for England is needed not just to provide regulation for local authority standards committees that are enforcing the code of conduct, but to supply advice, support and training to local authority members to ensure that they work within the conduct regime. The abolition of the Standards Board and the Adjudication Panel would be a blow to high standards of conduct in the democratic process. Moreover, it would send a message that, far from building a fair, transparent and robust conduct regime, Parliament is intent on removing bodies whose purpose is to support the conduct regime. The amendments tabled by the hon. Members for Wycombe (Mr. Goodman), for Peterborough (Mr. Jackson) and for Ludlow (Mr. Dunne)—amendments 24, 25 and 26—seek to ensure that the duty to promote democracy, the petitions duty and the extension of the duty to involve, do not come into force until July 2011. I have listened carefully to the concerns that they have raised, a number of which were raised in Committee. I can confirm that no final decision has been taken about the commencement of these provisions. We have been working to ensure that everything is in place to allow the duty to be commenced at the earliest possible date, but we are keeping all options open at this point and are considering the best way forward in the wider context of the Government's work on strengthening local democracy, including responses to the consultation on the subject, which has just come to a close, and in light of the current economic climate. The amendments would limit our flexibility to decide the most appropriate time to commence these duties. However, let me be clear that, in order to keep all options open, including the option of bringing the provisions into force in April 2010, prompt action may need to be taken to allow the appropriate stages to be taken, such as issuing draft statutory guidance for consultation.